Many years ago, before I was married and had children, I remember flying over the Great Barrier Reef in an aeroplane on my way to the UK.

On the seat-back television screen I was watching ‘Finding Nemo’. I had a window seat and as I looked down over the crystal clear sea made up of a myriad of green and blue Pantone colours with the odd inviting atoll dotted about, I remember thinking how strange it was that I was thousands of metres up in the air watching an animated film about the sorts of creatures that lived in the tropical sea directly below me.

Suffice to say that I jumped at the chance to be sent a preview copy of the new Paramount DVD ‘Reef 2 High Tide’.

I must admit, I haven’t watched the 2006 film, ‘The Reef’, but thankfully you didn’t need to have in order to enjoy the sequel.

It’s the story of a brave little fish called ‘Pi’ who (once again) has to save his home reef, and his fish-wife Cordelia and son Junior, from a big nasty bully-shark called ‘Troy’. He enlists the help of all of his reef buddies, training them in the martial art of ‘fish-fu’, proving that, no matter how small you are, if you all work together to stand up against something you know is not right, you can make a difference. This type of moral holds particular interest for me with the work I’ve been doing as part of the ‘Love for Izzy Dix‘ anti-bullying campaign. Watching this film with my 4 year old son, Gammon, has been an easy and natural way to introduce the topic of bullying with him, without scaring him too much.

Magical colours

The main thing that struck me with ‘Reef 2 High Tide’ was the bright cornucopia of colour of the underwater landscape. Every possible colour of the rainbow jumps out at you, just like it does when you’re snorkelling on a real reef.

This film is released on DVD, digital and On Demand on 17th February, just in time for half term, and Paramount have put out some activity sheets that I’ve attached to the bottom of this post for you to do with your kids.

If the recent weather continues the way it has been throughout the holidays, I’m sure any parent of primary school-aged children will be very pleased to have this cinematic weapon in their arsenal. I, for one, will be very pleased to be watching underwater escapades in the comfort of our lounge room rather than having underwater escapades of our own outside the front door.